6 Gwennap Head
Gwennap Head
They saw to the logistics during the long walk back to Gwennap Head. Edward Knight wanted his newly minted representative
to leave for Ibiza immediately, but Gabriel insisted he required twenty-four hours to put his affairs in order. With any luck,
he added, the situation might resolve itself by then. Knight, while disappointed, agreed to the delay. His private executive
helicopter, he said, would be waiting at Land’s End Airport at two the following afternoon. It would deliver Gabriel to Luton,
where he would board the company Bombardier for the flight to Ibiza. Liam Higgins would arrange first-class lodgings at the
Ibiza Gran Hotel. Knight would inform the commissioner of the Policía Nacional of Gabriel’s pending arrival.
Next they discussed communications. Knight wanted the number for Gabriel’s private mobile phone. Gabriel replied that Knight
could reach him through the good offices of Isherwood Fine Arts.
“It’s too unwieldy,” he protested.
“I’m sure you’ll find Sarah Bancroft most accommodating.”
“Is it true she used to work for the CIA?”
“Wherever did you hear a thing like that?”
“The London art world is rather small, Allon.” They had arrived back at the cottage. Edward Knight opened the door of his
Rolls. “I insist on being kept abreast of your every move.”
“You won’t hear from me until I have something concrete.”
“Are you forgetting the price that I paid for the Bellotto?”
“You haven’t paid anything yet.”
“I’ll transfer the money to the gallery’s account at Barclays first thing in the morning.” Knight glanced toward the entrance
of the cottage. Chiara stood in the open doorway, arms folded, an inscrutable expression on her face. “I suppose you’ll have
to tell her everything.”
“There are no secrets between us.”
“You’re a very lucky man, Allon.”
Knight slid behind the wheel of the Rolls and started the engine. Gabriel waited until the car had passed through the security
gate, then turned and set off across the drive. It was all Julian’s fault, he would tell his wife. It usually was.
“And how exactly are you supposed to find her?”
“I have a terrible feeling I won’t.”
“She’s dead, you mean?”
“It sounds as though the Spanish authorities are leaning in that direction.”
Gabriel was seated atop a stool in the kitchen, watching Chiara prepare dinner. On the counter before him was a laptop computer
and a platter of bruschetta topped with creamy polenta and caramelized mushrooms. They paired well with the wine he was drinking,
a perfectly reasonable Sancerre he had picked up at the Morrisons in Long Rock.
Chiara refilled his glass. “You realize, I hope, that your new friend Edward Knight may know more about his wife’s disappearance
than he’s telling you.”
“Much more,” agreed Gabriel.
“And yet you know nothing about him.”
“That’s not quite true.” Gabriel indicated the laptop. “It says here that Knight cracked the top one hundred on the Times
Rich List this year for the first time, with an estimated net worth of two point three billion pounds. A remarkable achievement,
given the fact that his divorce from wife number one cost him nearly a billion.”
“I suppose Alice was to blame.”
“Boys will be boys.”
“How did they meet?”
“Alice was working as a freelance journalist at the time. Edward granted her a rare interview.”
“Rather unprofessional on her part, don’t you think?”
“These things happen,” lamented Gabriel with a sigh.
Chiara spooned a mixture of ricotta and leeks onto a sheet of freshly made pasta dough. “And how, precisely, did Edward Knight
earn his billions?”
“As far as I can tell, he’s never built an actual building in his life. He simply buys existing commercial and residential
properties and rents them out.”
“He’s a glorified landlord—is that what you’re saying?”
“Glorified being the key word,” added Gabriel. “The Knight Group owns a large portion of Sussex, several office buildings
in the City of London, and huge tracts of housing in places like Notting Hill, Shepherd’s Bush, and Battersea. And those are
the properties we know about. Knight’s business is notoriously opaque. He’s fond of anonymous shell companies and brass plate
trusts, which allow him to conceal the true scale of his empire.”
“So he could be much richer than The Times suggests?”
“He didn’t bat an eye at dropping twenty million on the Bellotto.”
“A million of which will flow to you?”
“Upon completion of the restoration,” said Gabriel sheepishly.
Chiara set aside the bowl of ravioli filling and took up her phone. Her thumbnails clicked against the screen.
“May I ask what you’re doing?”
“Reviewing Alice’s social media feeds.” She shook her head slowly in dismay. “One wonders how she found the time for all this.
It’s really quite juvenile.”
“I post, therefore I am.”
Chiara turned the phone in Gabriel’s direction. On the screen was a photograph of a suntanned Alice Winter flanked by two
thirtysomething women. They were seated at a beachside restaurant on Ibiza.
“Sophie Maxwell and Ella Burns,” said Gabriel. “Her classmates from Cambridge.”
Chiara swiped to another photograph. “And this, I assume, is Phoebe Chadwick?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Interesting, don’t you think? Phoebe Chadwick leaves Ibiza in a huff, and a day later Alice vanishes.”
“Are you suggesting that a relief coordinator from a respected global aid organization somehow engineered the disappearance
of one of her closest friends?”
Chiara dragged a forefinger across the screen and showed Gabriel a new photograph. “What about him?”
It was Edward Knight, his arm around the slender waist of his attractive young wife. He wore the expression of a man who did
not like to have his picture taken.
“He has a rather airtight alibi,” Gabriel pointed out. “After all, he was sitting next to you when he learned that his wife’s
rental car had been discovered.”
“So he says.” Chiara laid a second sheet of pasta atop the first and began slicing perfect squares of ravioli with a daggerlike knife. “For the record, I couldn’t hear a thing that assistant of his whispered into his ear.”
“You don’t really think he had something to do with his wife’s disappearance?”
“The husband of a murdered wife is always the leading suspect.”
“She isn’t a murder victim yet. And if Edward Knight were somehow connected to his wife’s disappearance, the last person in
the world he would ask to find her is me.”
“You are quite good at finding things,” said Chiara. “Lost Leonardos, ancient temples, even the odd terrorist.”
“You forget to mention trouble.”
“That too. Which is why you should tell Edward Knight to hire another investigator.”
“The twenty million he spent on the Bellotto would indicate he has his heart set on me.”
“At least have a look under Knight’s fingernails before you go running off to Ibiza,” said Chiara. “You’re liable to find
something unpleasant.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?”
“Why don’t you phone one of your many friends in the British government?”
“You can be certain that Edward Knight has friends in HMG too.”
“What about your friend from the Devon and Cornwall Police? He might know something.”
Gabriel plunged a bruschetta into the ravioli filling and devoured it in a single bite.
“Must you?” asked Chiara.
“I dip,” replied Gabriel. “Therefore I am.”